‘Very unattractive’ Britain leaves drugmaker AstraZeneca eyeing China as the next big growth region

The boss of drugmaker AstraZeneca blasted the UK’s high taxes when he touted China as the next big growth region – declaring the country “fully open” to foreign companies.

Pascal Soriot, the CEO of the FTSE 100 group, said Britain is “very unattractive for companies to invest in” and warned that it is difficult for pharmaceutical companies to establish production bases in Britain.

The comments came as he said Astra could “definitely do acquisitions” in China, a country where it has signed several licensing deals.

Soriot, who just spent two weeks there, said China has seen an “explosion of biotech companies” working on new drugs and there has been no pressure from jurisdictions such as Europe and the US to discourage it from investing there.

“There’s no limit to this,” Soriot said. It came as the Anglo-Swedish company posted better-than-expected results for the first three months of this year.

Sales fell 4 percent year-on-year to £8.7 billion, weighed down by a 98 percent drop in sales of Covid vaccine vaxzevria to £22.5 million.

And revenues from evusheld, the antibody treatment for the virus, fell 73 percent to £102 million after US regulators revoked its use license because it proved ineffective in fighting sub-variants of the virus.

But there was a 19 percent increase in cancer drug sales. Excluding Covid remedies, total sales rose 10 per cent to £8.6 billion.

The group also maintained its full-year outlook and forecasts revenue growth of “low to mid-single digits” for 2023.

The results came ahead of the annual general meeting, at which Soriot dismissed a challenge to his leadership by shareholder advisory firm Pirc, which wanted his resignation over concerns of mounting legal battles that the company said could have “financial or reputational damage.”

Shares fell 0.4 percent, or 48p, to 11,796p.